Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Writing Messages

To send email to a recipient, click the Compose icon on the toolbar. The New Message form, shown in Figure 19-4, opens so you can begin creating the message.

Here’s how you go about writing a message:

1. Type the email address of the recipient in the To field.

   If you want to send this message to more than one person, separate their addresses with commas: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail].

   You don’t have to remember and type those addresses, either. If somebody is in your address book (Rebuilding Your Mail Databases), just type the first couple letters of his name; Mail automatically completes the address. (If the first guess is wrong, just type another letter or two until Mail revises its proposal.)

   As in most dialog boxes, you can jump from blank to blank (from the To field to the CC field, for example) by pressing the Tab key.

2. To send a copy of the message to other recipients, enter the email address(es) in the CC field.

   CC stands for carbon copy. Getting an email message where your name is in the CC line implies: “I sent you a copy because I thought you’d want to know about this correspondence, but I’m not expecting you to reply.”

3. Type the topic of the message in the Subject field.

   It’s courteous to put some thought into the Subject line (use “Change in plans for next week” instead of “Yo,” for example).

4. Specify an email format.

   There are two kinds of email: plain text and formatted (HTML or, in Mail’s case, what Apple calls Rich Text). Plain text messages ...